Open source works best in situations where a technical problem needs to be solved. There is little disagreement, because the problem is fixed (by inception of the open source project) and therefore the goal is fixed, and there is an objective measure for how well proposed solutions work towards the goal.

Government is not about achieving goals. Government is about deciding what the goals are. And people do genuinely disagree on what the goals should be. So government does not lend itself to open source processes. (Of course, open source software is very useful for and should be used by governments due to its open and thus transparent nature, but that's an entirely different discussion, even though the same words are involved.)

By the way, a large part of what goes wrong in a democracy is that people are fooled into believing that government is about achieving goals. It's not. Repeat again: Government is about deciding what the goals are. Whenever a politician puts a lot of emphasis on the claim that they are unideological, that they are just looking for common sense solution, they are attempting to hide from you what really matters: their goals.

I like this idea. In fact, let's take politicians out of this and the issues in. We can have a ballot that says "check this box if you love freedom" and "check this box if you love furry kittens". That way, people will vote on what's really important.

Also your point is null because we don't need the opinions of idiots... If you really think people who have no knowledge on a topic should be allowed to vote on it then you've lost all credibility in my mind.

Ah, a utopian dream of a fair and open democracy where only people deemed smart enough are allowed to participate. What's wrong with this picture?

[color="#1c2837"]Exactly, we want it to contradict itself because then the voter must be level headed and take both sides into account.

Issues aren't binary, for one. And for another, the fact that some questions will contradict each other suggests that that the accuracy of the answers isn't necessarily very good. And the test can still be as partisan as anything else. If you can identify the 50% of questions written by groups that share your ideology (not necessarily your expertise), you can answer all of those with the "correct" answers according to that group. If you randomly guess on the answers for the other questions, assuming a standard 4-5 option multiple choice exam, statistically you will get and additional 20-25% right, giving your vote weight. Alternatively, you can know the ideology of the opposotion to the measure, and simply pick the answers that satisfy that, and boom: instant counted vote, without having to know anything beyond what's on your favorite news channel.

[color="#1c2837"]The questions will be chosen at random out of a large pool of questions and telling people how to take the test would obviously be illegal.[/quote]

Random selection from a large pool helps. But that still doesn't solve the issue of the question writers (and it's still not clear who these people are) writing loaded questions designed to be "correctly" answered by ideological supporters. You don't have to know about the issue, you just have to know the party line. Which people already do.

You'd be hard pressed to stop people from gaming the testing process. Companies like Kaplan and the Harvard Review have built an entire industry on it. It's not about passing out partisan cheat-sheets before voting time. It's about teaching people how to exploit the testing format. I think that you'd have a hard time outlawing it, and an even harder time actually enforcing it. Plus you probably don't even have to be that devious; see above.
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[color="#1c2837"]The studies would be conducted by government agencies and if someone is found "fixing" the result they will be fired.[/quote]

They aren't independent if they're conducted by the government. And it can be extremely difficult to point out a loaded study, which is why the entire peer review process exists. This is especially true in crucial fields like economics, where there are so many factors and approaches that you can push pretty much any result you want into the public discourse. It took about a decade for Dr. Wakefield to be found out definitively, and his BS study has done a lot of harm in the meantime.

Besides, it's still not so easy as "we'll fire anyone who looks dishonest and everything will be fine". What if there's a vote coming up, and Dr. Hack releases a bogus study in a timeframe that's early enough to get on the test, but too late to debunk before the test is administered? See Dr. Wakefield above.

If the nation's top finance experts suggest a tax deal that decreases taxes for themselves and increases them for everyone else, and then write a test which disqualifies everyone who thinks differently, how is that the best result?
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They won't be the ones writing the tests...[/quote]

Then who will? Will your government-run research offices be staffed with incompetent idiots? No matter how highly trained your technocratic elite will be, they will still have an interest in the outcome of legislation, and will always have some incentive to direct that outcome. If you disqualify them from writing the tests or the bills, then you've lost the thrust of your concept in which the experts direct policy. And the people that you replace them with will still have an interest in the outcome and incentives to affect that outcome. Even if you can convince me that they won't have any impact on the writing of the tests, the experts will be passing at a much, much higher rate than most people, so their views will direct the process almost as much as if they also control the test content.

[color="#1c2837"]If 20 laws are proposed under a single bill then they will all be voted on as one and will pass or not by X deadline. If 20 laws are [color="#1c2837"]proposed separately then each law will pass or not by it's deadline. There is absolutely no way it would be any less decisive than any current system.[/quote]

Except that you'll have to write a test and organize a vote on every single issue you want to deal with, which is hardly an easy or nimble process. But if you want to claim decisiveness, go ahead, I think that there are other issues which dwarf this one.

I honestly don't understand what you have against smart people... Do you think they speak to each other telepathically and work together to screw over the common man?...[/quote]

You're joking, right? The political elite already influence policy for their own benefit. It's a basic economic proposition. The elites have a stake in the outcome of the legislative process, and they also have tools available to affect those outcomes. A rational actor will work to maximize the benefits that they get from a system.

This happens in politics today. Hyper-wealthy firms (think Goldman Sachs, big banks, and so on) have armies of lobbysits whose only purpose is to make things better for those institutions. Is it good for the country and its populace to have weak consumer protection laws and weak regulation of firms big enough to cripple our economy on their own (evidenced by the fact that they did that already)?

We can debate it, I guess. But public opinion is clearly against it according to every poll I've seen. And yet, the heads of these firms get big bonuses while they drive exactly those policies. Their lobbyists get paid big bucks to make that happen. It is better for them to have the policies come out that way, regardless of whether or not it's better for the country or the mass of people. And I'll give you a hint: the heads of these firms and their lobbyists will pass any poll test you give-- they are the experts you're referring to. Your system may shake things up as to exactly who has the extra political influence, but it will still classify a group which has disproportionate influence over policy.

It's not about having something against smart people, or thinking that they're all diabolical James Bond-esque villains. It's about expecting people to act in their own interests, which they do, especially in politics.

I don't see how it is even remotely worse than any current system existing today... You've not given any reason why it would be worse and have only stated what you believe without any evidence... To me you sound like one of those people who believe the moon landing was a government hoax or that the twin towers were blown up by the government. I'm doubtful there are any grand conspiracies in the government since anything of that nature would need notoriety in order to gain momentum and would only require one person to leak everything. I don't believe in conspiracies since it contradicts human nature.[/quote]

I'm a conspiracy theorist because I think that not everyone is out to enrich the rest of mankind? That's quite a reach. There doesn't need to be a conspiracy for some groups to have disproportionate political influence, and use that influence to their own benefit. It's happening now with political parties and special interest groups.

I don't know what kind of evidence you want. There is no such system, so there's not much for me to point to. All I can do is offer an analysis of your concept, with examples that illustrate my points. I'm taking your hypothetical system and looking at how that affects peoples' incentives, and my analysis has produced several points where things will not be egalitarian or more productive or better. Your response to every issue I've raised is "that won't happen" or "that would be illegal, obviously", or "people don't act out of self interest", or "studies will be independent, but run by the government, and always point to one correct answer". You don't suggest why that is the case, and why the potential dangers I raise won't happen or will be dealt with effectively.

Your system does not preclude the uninformed from voting. Some may be, but others will get their votes counted because it's in too many peoples' interests for that not to happen. Loaded questions and bogus studies, or flat out manipulation of whose votes are thrown out don't guarantee that the adequately informed will drive policy based on sound knowledge. This is all possible without any grand conspiracy, because both tests and laws will be written by people with an interest in the outcome. You assume that all issues have a single clear-cut, bright-line, verified correct analysis, and that's simply not the case.

You haven't even tried to address my point that parties will still exist to bind together different groups wtih compatible goals, and that they will be able to engage in things like vote trading with impunity. Maybe there would be more political parties, and maybe not. But it's another factor that might affect policy beyond sound, direct expertise.

The most serious issue comes from checks on the system. If, as in an example I gave which you chose not to address, the people who drive relevant policy choose to go to war, a war that neither they nor their children will have to fight, for reasons that are dubious at best, is it acceptable for the votes of those who actually do need to go and fight to not count at all? Is it acceptable for the wealthiest, quite a few of whom will be quite smart as well, to impose taxes on others others while reducing their own, and for no one but largely that same wealthiest segment of the population to ever get a vote?

And there are other issues as well. The results of tests won't necessarily reflect knowledge, but can also reflect strategy or ideology. Studies can be inaccurate, and it's expensive and slow to correct them. Studies can be manipulated by people who conduct them to satisfy an agenda. There is no totally impartial body to judge the soundess of a study, especially in an environment with rapid turnover and extremely close ties to legislation, just the broad community of scientists. And the government can't employ them all. Not to mention stuff which isn't even testable: if there's ballot measure about capitol punishment, does a moral argument matter?

Any system which exists will have the potential for exploitation by those smart enough to do the exploiting. The relative rewards for that exploitation will determine how many people engage in it, and at what scale they do so. Your position seems to be that there won't be exploitation of your system, but I really don't see how or why that would be the case. And if exploitation occurs, there is no remedy, because the exploiters dominate the only group that can vote in their field. This exploitation doesn't need to occur in every vote all the time to be a problem.

Any level of "corruption" is simply due to an inability of people to act as intelligent individuals which results in people following the flock. This can be seen in Nazi Germany, North Korea, and even Libya. People will commit hanus acts without any hesitation as long as it's accepted by their peers and promoted by authority figures. Most people are just sheep and any system that is based simply on the number of people will result in corruption due to the flock mentality. You keep suggesting that corruption is caused by smart people with hidden agendas and conspiracies when it is really caused by stupid sheep like people which make up a majority of human population. Simply because they tend to follow the first crazy guy who comes along.
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Preposterous. Corruption doesn't come from huge population segments that don't think for themselves. They don't need to come from conspiracies either. If a mayor takes bribes to decide what contractors get which city contracts, that's corruption. It occurs because the mayor has a reason to do so (he/she gets money). No great amount of people are involved with the process, be they sheep or otherwise. And a dirty mayor and underhanded contractors will succeed in their corruption only if they are smart enough to do so without getting caught. Corruption has nothing to do with war crimes, and while it's often seen in authoritarian regimes it is in no way defined by them.

The agendas aren't hidden, and there are no conspiracies required. It's just people who have an incentive to do something that is not legal or ethical, and people with greater political power have more connections and opportunities to do such things, and on a larger scale than others.

As far as parties go it does not matter if someone forms a party but the system should never recognize these parties and categorize new laws into either a democrat or republican law. That would cause people to vote for their party and ignore what the law is even for which is what is currently happening in the US...

I like that much of the idea. There's been some suggestion of removing party affiliations from ballots. I've thought that could make for an improvement to encouraging people make more educated decisions. It's not a matter of go in and check every D or R in sight.

I like this idea. In fact, let's take politicians out of this and the issues in. We can have a ballot that says "check this box if you love freedom" and "check this box if you love furry kittens". That way, people will vote on what's really important.

Taken to the extreme, this does not work, simply because we do not have time for it. Specialisation is an important part of complex societies, and there is merit in having people specialise to become politicians, so that the rest of us have time to do other things.

That said, you may be interested in the concepts of Delegation / Liquid Democracy, which aim for a synthesis between representative and direct democracy.